Boulder and the Beautiful: Stop bullying your face

Can we slow down with the peels and exfoliation?

Esthetician Danny Neifert works to do a facial on Melody Conway at Radiant Well Being of Boulder. (Jeremy Papasso / Staff Photographer)

It's simple. To look younger, all you have to do is burn your skin, fry it with a laser, scrape it down, rub it off, poke it, peel it, pump it full of chemicals, slather it in synthetic goo, inject it with neurotoxins, paralyze your muscles and bake in a conventional oven on 400 for 45 minutes.

That will definitely make you look younger, guys. I swear.

That's what the modern skin care industry is telling you. Well, except the oven part. I mixed up skin care with my casserole recipe. Which means I should probably remove the vibrating sonic brush from my dinner. Although I wouldn't be surprised to see a Bridal Broil Treatment on a spa menu.

Can we stop for just one hot second to critically think about this?

The mainstream anti-aging protocol is to essentially injure your skin, with the expectation of kickstarting the production of certain things that can lead to a more youthful appearance. Sort of like how you break down muscles by lifting weights to make them bigger.

But there's a fringe of holistic professionals who say skin doesn't work that way — and all of these peels and lasers and exfoliating actually may be speeding up the appearance of age.

"Wounded skin is scientifically proven to only recover by 85 to 90 percent. It never goes back to 100 percent. And the idea that if you wound it and it goes back to 110 percent is ludicrous, by scientific standards," says Ben Johnson, who runs the Evergreen-based skin care line Osmosis Pur Medical Skincare.

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Johnson claims his line has broken new ground. But this time, really. And this innovation is a hark back to nature.

During the formulation of his line, he says he realized the first problem in the industry was in traumatizing the skin. Yes, after a laser treatment you always see an increase in collagen, he says. But after that artificial tightening effect fades, he says, many people's skin looks worse.

(Aimee Heckel / Boulder and the Beautiful)

Instead, he says, he looked at the skin's slowing down — of circulation, turnover, thickness and more — by the time a person is 50. It made him think about the body's metabolism. If you starve your body, the metabolism slows. So could the skin just be, well, hungry?

Johnson set out to design better ways to "feed" the skin healthy nutrients. Instead of excessive exfoliation and renewing, feeding and nourishing it on deep levels.

When the skin has enough healthy fuel, it naturally begins speeding up its game, from the inside out, which makes it appear smoother and younger, he says.

Johnson claims he has had amazing results, and his website points to clinical trials and research backing it up.

But trying out Osmosis isn't as simple as visiting his website and ordering whatever you want. You have to enter a code provided by a skin care professional upon checkout, and it can be complicated to navigate all of the options.

That's where Danny Neifert enters. Neifert is new to Boulder, as in she's currently establishing a skin care practice in the city. She comes from a California studio, but is from southern Colorado and has long maintained a client base in the state, she says.

Neifert takes what she considers the best practices of Osmosis and personally formulates them for each client, simplifying and customizing the process. She also combines the Osmosis line with a few others, as well as her own formulations. She blends holistic with medical offerings in such a way that once she brings your skin up to its healthiest level, she says you only need to get a facial once a year.

Compare this to the typical recommendation of monthly or more.

Instead of creating a dependency on her services, she says her goal is to make your skin so healthy and easy to care for on your own that you barely need to see her.

Depending on your skin's health, it can take two weeks up to a rare three years for your skin to reach ultimate health, Neifert says. That process includes a thorough clearing out skin congestion of nearly every single pore.

"Crazy acne and sun damage can be healed with nutrients," Neifert says.

Her treatments are not cheap, at least up front. A new-client special is $425, but that includes a follow-up session or home care package. After that, a 90-minute facial is $325 (the average one-hour facial at other studios costs about $100).

Of course, if you really only need one of those every year (that varies per person), compared with $100 a month for 12 months, that'll save you $975 a year, no trauma necessary. She says it provides the same benefits of clinical remedies, such as microdermabrasion or chemical peels, but without the potential for long-term damage.

She also recommends using a custom serum at home throughout the year. The serum serves as food and water for the skin, and a thick face butter acts as protection. Just like us, skin needs food, water and protection to thrive, she says.

"Skin can be healed in a more thorough and profound way with dermal nutrients, hydration and barrier restoration," Neifert says. "Chemical peels, retinol creams and trauma-based procedures are obsolete. And sadly, this is currently 100 percent of the medical industry standard."

The irony is not only are those things not helping, but those procedures and products are causing aging and causing acne, she says.

"It's so absurd," she says. "If consumers were educated, they would be demanding different things. My goal is to educate people."

Neifert says she used to offer traditional treatments, until she switched tracks about 10 years ago. She calls her approach Dermal Remodeling.

"This is a big game changer," she says. "It works better."

Whether or not it does, time will (quite honestly) tell. But I'm drawn to the idea of never intentionally paralyzing my face and then rubbing it against a cheese grater. Oh wait, that was my casserole recipe again. Oh wait, no it wasn't.

I'll take the wrinkles over that menu item.

Read more about Neifert and her treatments at skinharmonics.com. Ask about her free skin care consultations for new clients so you can learn more.

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